The concept of magnetic stripe credit cards was generally embraced by merchants and consumers when standards were adopted by the industry in the 1970's. The International Airline Transport Association (IATA) and the American Banking Association (ABA) defined the standards for magnetic domain encoding for tracks 1 and 2, respectively, of magnetic stripe cards. A third track of magnetic stripe cards is still used by some organizations such as ATM machines for read and write functions, and utilizes unique organization encoding schemes. The International Standards Organization (ISO/IEC 7811) established standards for the architectural design and acceptable materials composition of magnetic stripe cards.
Electronic/computer “RF proximity chip cards” introduced in the late 1980s were originally used for applications such as inventory control. ISO standards 15693 and 14443, sub type A and B, typically define such characteristics of RF proximity chip cards that include operational frequencies, electromagnetic coupling distance, and data integrity. These RF proximity chip cards have now increased in popularity for use with employee access to secure areas such as office buildings. The RF proximity chip cards typically receive power for on-card electronic functions via an induced electromagnetic field held within about 10 cm of the communications transceiver. Data is typically transferred to the on-card chip via electromagnetic sub-carriers and switching of the electromagnetic field.
The integrated circuits resident within these RF proximity chip cards have continued to improve with low power and the addition of cryptographical functions that now meet government “strong” encryption standards (DES, RSA, etc.) as standardized by Europay Mastercard and Visa (EMV) cryptographic and tamper-proof standards for crytoprocessor chips. As a result, the RF proximity chip cards are slowly replacing the magnetic stripe card for use in financial transactions, primarily due to the security of the magnetic stripe user data and the ability of the POS card acceptance system to “interrogate” the RF proximity chip card. The lower fraudulent transactions associated with such a smart card results in lower risk, and lower fees for the consumer and merchant.
Even more recently, the increased speed and reduced size of electronic devices has resulted in the proliferation of powerful and portable personal trusted devices, or PTDs. Mobile PTDs including the personal digital assistant (PDA) and cellular phone now number in the millions worldwide. The ability of these PTDs to communicate via cellular and wireless ISP networks has been augmented by their ability to exchange data over short ranges, typically 1 mm–10 meters, for purposes of secure data sharing between PTD devices and such peripheral devices as printers. These short-range networks are typically referred to as personal area networks (PAN). One predominant short-range RF communications network standard, defined by the International Electrical and Electronic Engineers association (IEEE), is known as the IEEE 802.11(b) standard, and includes such protocols as BLUETOOTH. Other RF communications protocols include but are not limited to IEEE 802.11(a) and 802.11(g). A major short-range infra-red (IR) communications network protocol, defined by the Infra-red Device Association (IrDA), is known as the IrDA standard and their present specification is IRDA v1.2.
The variety of functions available to PTDs is increasing rapidly, for example with remote banking being popularized via the internet and telephone ordering. Many merchants are now able to use mobile transaction processing systems with cellular wireless ISP networks providing bank access and such support functions as consumer authentication, transaction authorization, event logging, and settlement. Consumers are now able to access and effect personal account maintenance functions via bank websites and similar portals.
Despite this advancement, there remain 21 million world-wide merchants having only magnetic stripe card acceptance systems. Many of these merchants obtained their magnetic stripe card acceptance system years ago, and are resistant towards replacing their equipment and undergoing training in the use of newer systems. As a result, most new financial card equipment sales are merely replacement models. Upgrades to new equipment, including merchant systems capable of reading the RF proximity chip cards, is primarily driven by head offices of franchise or branch retail stores desiring to improve inventory, financial accounting, and similar functions, who may not necessarily exert influence over individual, independent merchants. Yet another barrier to adopting technology for RF proximity chip card transactions is that manufacturers of magnetic stripe card acceptance systems may disqualify any attempt to upgrade their devices through direct modification of electrical connections, thereby discouraging upgrades by third party equipment suppliers.
A problem thus exists whereby the technology for more secure consumer/user financial data storage and transactions is available, but is compromised by a reluctance of merchants to replace their existing POS card acceptance systems. Therefore, it can be seen that there is a need in the art for devices and methods which enable older legacy POS card acceptance systems to be non-invasively adapted to interact with various newer technology PTD devices to meet the desires of the transaction industry, and the desires of the merchants